For those of our readers who are familiar with an article by Thomas Smith entitled : A critical Exposé Of the Medical establishment ( Those who are not please click on to it)  following the statement  by Dr. David Edsall, former Dean of The Harvard Medical School, Mr. Smith continues on with a description of the drug companies control over your doctor’s decision on which medications to prescribe. On Saturday, June 21^st.2003 the following article appeared in many of the  newspapers in the New York Metropolitan area and we are sure in the rest of the country. The title, Astra-Zeneca pleads guilty in Cancer Medicine Scheme.

The Muriel S. Miller Foundation is pleased to see that this news confirms the information presented in Thomas Smith’s presentation of his Critical Exposé of The Medical Establishment And The Pharmaceutical Industry. It’s exactly what he was talking about, now do you believe us? How much profit is there in the pharmaceutical industry when companies can pay fines of 355 million and 875 million dollars without a second thought and then continue on with business as usual. This is just the tip of the iceberg; you will soon read about the rest of the industry where this practice is rampant. The next time you visit your doctor and he has just returned from vacation ask him which of your medications paid for his cruise to Bermuda. Don’t blame your doctor, blame the drug companies with their multi-million dollar advertising campaigns on Radio and Television. Every time you see or hear a commercial with those famous words “ Talk To Your Doctor or Ask Your Doctor” understand that he has already been bombarded by numbers of detail persons (really high pressure salespersons). This is a sick situation and getting sicker and will go on as long as these drug companies keep getting fined, pay them and go on  controlling and corrupting the medical profession.

Here is the article from the New York Times, Saturday, June 21^st.2003 written by Melody Petersen. It is condensed because of space limitations on our website.

Astra-Zeneca Pleads Guilty In Cancer Medicine Scheme 

Wilmington, del., June 20- Astra-Zeneca, the large pharmaceutical company, pleaded guilty today to a felony charge of health care fraud and agreed to pay $355 million to settle criminal and civil accusations that it engaged in a nationwide scheme to illegally market a prostate cancer drug.

The government said the company’s employees had given illegal financial inducements to as many as 400 doctors across the country to persuade them to prescribe the drug, Zoladex. Those inducements included thousands of free samples of Zoladex, worth hundreds of dollars each, which the physicians then billed to Medicare and other federal health care programs, prosecutors said. The company also gave doctors financial grants, paid them as consultants and provided free travel and entertainment, the government said.

The $355 million that Astra-Zeneca, a British company, agreed to pay is among the largest settlements in a health care fraud case. Of that amount, about $64 million is a criminal fine. The company will pay about $266 million to the federal government to settle most of the civil accusations. An additional $25 million will go to settle accusations that it defrauded the Medicaid programs, which are partly financed by the states. The largest fine for health care fraud came in a settlement in October 2001 by TAP Pharmaceutical Products. It agreed to pay $875 million to settle criminal and civil accusations that it had engaged in a scheme that largely mirrors the allegations made by prosecutors against Astra-Zeneca.

“We want doctors to prescribe what is best for their patients and not what is best for the doctor’s bank account”, Richard G. Andrews, first assistant United States Attorney for the District Of Delaware, said at a news conference. He and other prosecutors said the government’s action should send a message to all pharmaceutical companies that such conduct will not

be tolerated.

Prosecutors said that they did not plan to charge any Astra-Zeneca employees for the illegal activities that they say began in 1991 and continued until last year. “ The investigation did not discover any evidence to implicate Astra-Zeneca’s upper level of management,” Mr. Andrews said. Mr. Andrews said that Astra-Zeneca had reported false and inflated prices for Zoladex to the federal government so that doctors could earn significant profits by prescribing the drug. Medicare reimbursed the doctors based on the inflated prices that Astra-Zeneca reported, he said, while the company charged doctors for the drug at deep discounts. For example, the company reported to the government that the average wholesale price for a monthly dose of Zoladex was about $ 300, prosecutors said, but doctors were charged about $170 for that dose. That resulted in a $130 profit to the doctor, the government said.

Rachel Bloom-Baglin, a spokeswoman for Astra-Zeneca, said today that the company was accepting responsibility for giving doctors free samples of Zoladex with the understanding that they would bill the government for them. These activities which took place from 1993 to 1996 resulted in the criminal charge. But she said that the company disagreed with the prosecutors on the other charges, including the accusation that it had provided false and inflated pricing information to the government. We disagree with the government on this but to put it behind us we are agreeing to a settlement today. We believe that this is in the best interest of our company and employees.  “We strongly believe that the pricing for Zoladex was at all times lawful”, she added. Zoladex is one of a limited number of medicines that doctors buy direct from drug companies and that Medicare now pays for. Many of these medicines are used for cancer patients and are administered in doctor’s offices.

Earlier, the government charged three urologists with conspiring to bill the free Zoladex samples they received from the company to the federal government. Two of these doctors have pleaded guilty and await sentencing. “Whether any further doctors should be charged is an ongoing question,” Mr. Andrews said. The governments seven-year investigation of the marketing of Zoladex began after an executive at TAP, a competitor, filed a whistle-blower lawsuit against both TAP and Astra-Zeneca, prosecutors said. The criminal investigation in the TAP case is continuing. More than a dozen current and former employees have been charged with conspiracy to pay kickbacks to doctors, including Alan MacKenzie, who was the president of Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America at the time of  the indictments. The whistle-blower, Douglas N. Durand, a former vice president for sales at TAP will receive $47.5 million of the settlement in the Astra-Zeneca case as allowed by federal law. Mr. Durand already received $77 million from the TAP case.

The two cases are part of a growing number of investigations and lawsuits into the  marketing practices of pharmaceutical companies. Astra-Zeneca disclosed earlier this year that federal prosecutors in Boston had requested documents about the sale of Prilosec, a drug for ulcers and severe heartburn. The company also said the Federal Trade Commission was investigating its advertising and marketing of Nexium, the company’s new heartburn drug. So much for the purple pill!!